I'm doing what I'm calling a pirate porter and part of the recipe calls for Pusser's Rum and oak chips. I soaked 1oz medium toasted oak chips in some rum for a little over a week, and that rum sure is tasty!

If you know anything about Pusser's, it's stored in oak barrels which is pretty unusual for a rum so it already has a bit of a woody flavor. My goal is to get both an oak flavor and a rum flavor to come through.

Now that I've taken the chips out of the rum it seems to me that they've lost all their oakiness. I popped one in my mouth and it just tastes like rum... should I even bother adding the chips to the beer? Logically I'm thinking that the rum has stripped all the oakiness out of the chips at this point so I don't need them, but will I be missing something by not actually adding them?

I plan on adding the oaked rum at bottling to taste then adding additional rum for more flavor if needed.

I purchased some Oak Cubes that were soaked in Rum (used to add some Oak flavor to rum) from Austin Homebrew. Do these need to be steamed or sanitized? Any suggestions? Wasn't sure if they were considered sanitized b/c they soaked in Rum for a few months and then sealed in a bag?

I'm planning on adding coconut and rum to a porter I started today. I have 2 lbs of coconut I plan on toasting and adding to the secondary along with the rum and maybe the oak cubes. I was thinking 16oz of rum on the oak cubes for 2 weeks or so then add the rum to the secondary but it sounds like you can't rum like you can bourbon.

1oz oak chips were soaked in pusser's rum in a jar, just enough to cover. After 2 weeks all the rum was drained and added at bottling and the chips were set aside. An extra splash of rum was added for good measure. 1lb fancy flaked coconut from whole foods was added to fermenter for a week. Taste before adding rum had a good coconut flavor, after adding rum, might have overdone it a little bit.

Pusser's is an oak barrel aged rum so that contributed some to the oakiness. I didn't add the chips at all.

It turned out quite good, the coconut flavor was definitely there and the rum came through how I wanted it to, it wasn't too much. The oakiness was subtle. As it aged it lost the coconut and wasn't nearly as good so plan on drinking it fresh.

AI was thinking 16oz of rum on the oak cubes for 2 weeks or so then add the rum to the secondary but it sounds like you can't rum like you can bourbon.

My experience is that rum flavor comes thru less than bourbon. I have added both in similar amounts to the same beer, and the bourbon was very prominent, and the rum was barely detectable. I used spiced rum.

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Originally Posted by derekge

Do you have a measurement on this? How much rum per bottle? Or did you just add it to the bottling bucket? I will be bottling 22 oz. Thanks!

Add the rum to the bottling bucket. It is a lot easier to be consistent between bottles. I generally use 10 ml per bottle (12 ozs). For 5 gallons, that would be 500 ml, or about 16 ozs.